Claire McCarthy

A collection of writing, music and art made between Hobart and Montreal, often as part of @_heart_beach

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Heart Beach - “Summer”

This clip is for the final song on Heart Beach’s Kiss Your Face LP, released a year ago this November. The song is about summer in Hobart when everyone comes home to see their family, and then heads to what was Knoppies or what is the Brisbane to catch up with their friends, (many who are also home from the “mainland”). 

The song was written by Heart Beach - Chris Wessing, Jon McCarthy and me in South Hobart in 2016. I made the video in a flat on Rue Beaubien in Montreal shortly after turning 32. On the morning of my birthday Jon presented me with a cake with candles in it and sang me the happy birthday song. It was in the middle of a Montreal heatwave, too hot to be outside. I hung about the cool of the cheap supermarket across the road and then near our fridge making what I hoped would look like the “magic forest” experiment we all had when we were kids - the cardboard diorama that grew sugar crystal snow and leaves. Already employed by Totally Mild, but this is my version that of course looks nothing like the original idea. 

That night we played a show at Bar Le Ritz with Slothrust and Tancred, and I left the final copy of Kiss Your Face that we had in Canada in the back of an uber. 

Now it’s November and Heart Beach is back in Australia. It’s 32 degrees in Melbourne right now and minus 7 in Montreal. Remember summer? Enjoy the clip. 

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Heart Beach - “Breath”

Here is number two out of three film clips I made on Heart Beach’s summer tour across Canada. This one is for ‘Breath’, a Heart Beach track written for our self-titled, debut LP. The footage is from a section of the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia between Yoho National Park and the Okanagan Valley filmed in late June 2017. 

The first time Heart Beach visited the Rocky Mountains everything was covered in snow. We were with our superfriends Dadweed on tour during April 2017. The roads were icy and Karlan drove like a madman and an expert as we yelled encouraging things from the backseats like “No sleep til Penticton.” We stopped on the roadside for a break, and trudged through snow to the washrooms (as they politely call them in Canada) set up in two long shipping containers. There were syringe bins in the toilets. It began snowing again before all seven of us could get back in the van. 

The second time Heart Beach drove this road it was just Jon, Jaq and me. Jaq isn’t in the clip because he was fast asleep in the backseat. The day before we visited Lake Louise, a stunning, turquoise blue lake surrounded by mountains just outside of Banff. I wanted to camp there but it was booked out for weeks. Towards dusk we found some back country camping ten kilometres off the highway at Takakkaw Falls in Yoho National Park. It is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, and certainly the best place I’ve ever camped. From our campsite we looked out over a scree slope to the river at the valley bottom and up to the waterfall itself. We lit a fire as the sun set, watched the stars come out and the final light reflect on the waterfall’s spray and the snow still captured in the highest crevices. Before bed we locked all our food away in the bear lockers and gave Jaq the only working phone to shine his way back to the car where he was sleeping. In the morning a tiny musk rat came to visit us, and all day I kept remembering the most magical vivid dreams.

On the drive we passed in and out of avalanche tunnels, and saw helicopters circle the higher peaks working on avalanche prevention. Road works sprung up as highway crews patched up the tarmac and reinforced bridges ahead of another snow season, and the sky was the most brilliant blue. 

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HEART BEACH - Hours

This film clip is for the first track 'Hours' off our debut album, Heart Beach LP. The song was written in the spirit of sunshine, good friends and nostalgia. The footage was taken during winter on the Expo Line between Main Street/Science World and Edmond Station in Vancouver. It is unashamedly DIY, but holds dear memories of being a band in a new place, lugging gear through the snow to our practice space at the top of Commercial Drive, and how much fun we had while we were missing home. 

At the end of last year Jon and I moved from Hobart, Tasmania to North America. Offered a substantial winter discount in L.A., we hired a Mustang with a sun roof and drove up the coast to Vancouver. In Eugene we met freezing rain. Icicles hung from trees and lamp posts like Christmas decorations. In Portland the roads were slush and the roads were lined with abandoned cars after the sudden snow storm. 

Our end destination was Montreal, but we thought better of -40 temperatures and settled in Vancouver for the winter. Still it snowed a lot and then it rained. Snow is what children prefer to rain, a work colleague told me after it hadn't stopped raining for a month. Adults don't necessarily like the rain, but they purchase umbrellas to deal with it. Umbrellas cover the eyes and bat against each other like wings as office workers wait to cross the slippery roads. 

Jon and I lived in a basement in Burnaby on the Expo Line and caught the Skytrain in and out of the city to our temp jobs and indie shows. We met Jaq Inglis the new drummer in Heart Beach. We made new friends, wrote songs, and prepared to tour across Canada in April with Vancouver band, Dadweed, and again on our own in June-July.

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The Tasmanian Writers' Centre

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Local music buzz | Video

Claire McCarthy: Two albums in, a Rolling Stone review, heading off on tour and then on to Canada

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There are only 3 copies of this guy in the world. I haven’t come close to getting a one! :-) So here is my poem from Picton Grange Quarterly Review (4). 

Northcote

Haven’t you seen it all before?

The black coats and long faces dark rimmed glasses beards and bangs trimmed bluntly keys that stick in locks doors that open long corridors walls lined with smouldering bricks and peeling paper vegans throwing up in the bathroom pools of cheap beer in the sink oranges in the courtyard hanging over the washing hamburger wrappers in the compost chicken hearts and feathers that beat til dawn

I learnt to read from the pictures in your shiny magazines I fasted and ate fast food spoke to long women holding hand cuffs smashed avocado across your broken nose wore sneakers to my job drank tea with my friends rode the trains until they stopped pushed my hair aside and made a new playlist

and tattooed all the places I had been onto your neck

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Two new poems published in poetry journal Prospect (6). This collection was edited by Pete Hay. 

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“A note from Tasmania on monolingualism and the power of English.”

https://bildlida.wordpress.com/2016/01/17/a-note-from-tasmania-on-monolingualism-and-the-power-of-english/

This is a piece I wrote for the Montreal based - Belonging, Identity, Language, Diversity Research Group (BILD) / Groupe de Recherche Langage, Identité, Diversité, Appartenance (LIDA)

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7 experimental essays from around Hobart are now available

Young Writers in the City - "Mathers House"

In Hobart’s CBD there is a place where retired women and men meet their friends. They play scrabble, take art and writing classes, computer and ukulele lessons, hold book clubs, discuss family history and grey nomad road trips. For the last few weeks I have been invited into this secret society. They tell me stories, let me eat lunch with them, and beat me at scrabble. In the quiet afternoons, I escape the chatter to sit typing by the windows. From an old laminex table I have a view of office workers buying bouquets, cakes and jams from the Flower Room. Over the fence I can see youngsters in puffer jackets race their tricycles through the childcare playground. Within this microcosm, I have time to reflect on what it means to grow old in a city like Hobart. With my thirtieth birthday approaching, this is also a story about snow

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Writer-in-residence for the next few weeks at Mathers House courtesy of the Tasmanian Writers' Centre and Hobart City Council: http://www.taswriters.org/community/young-writers-in-the-city/

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Enter the twilight zone - Australian Literary Studies Convention 2015: http://media.uow.edu.au/news/UOW198158

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TRANSPORTATION PRESS

Illuminating Tasmanian Literature through inspired connections

Submissions open.

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My poem “Northcote” is in the latest edition of Picton Grange Quarterly Review. 

There are only three precious copies. The rules are that each reader must consume and pass on within 24 hours. Thank you, Ben Walter (Editor). 

More info on the facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/pictongrange?pnref=story

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Transportation: Islands and Cities

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A review.

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By Claire Jansen When I was small with glasses in the shape of fish that I didn’t actually need and grazes speckled in deep maroon on my knees, the Lady Stelfox floated on the river...